Harold C. Simmons Cancer Center Tissue Management Shared Resource (Translational Research Resource) Project Summary/Abstract The Tissue Management Shared Resource was established in 2004 to provide IRB-approved centralized tissue procurement services for specimens derived from consented human participants. Over 22,000 tissue specimens and bodily fluids, from over 50 different tissue types including breast, lung, prostate, kidney, bladder, colon, pancreas, blood, pleural fluid, urine and bone marrow have been collected since its establishment. In terms of demographics, specimens were obtained from Caucasian (72%), African-American (24%) and Hispanic participants (16%). Of the tissues collected, 56% of specimens are derived from female participants. Although the basic functions and goals of the Tissue Management Shared Resource remain essentially unchanged, the capabilities of the facility have been significantly expanded to support the growing needs of Simmons Cancer Center members and facilitate translational research activities. To facilitate this growth, Tissue Management Shared Resource has moved to a new location that provides additional space for equipment and staff. The equipment has been updated to accommodate increased and changing research needs. Additionally, tissue banking and annotation of specimens has been extensively expanded. Specimen related data are captured and stored in our tissue management database, caTissue Plus, and are correlated with clinical information through the Simmons Cancer Center's clinical research data warehouse (i2b2) as part of the UTSW Center for Translational Medicine (CTM), which is the institutional CTSA (Clinical & Translational Science Award). This tool links caTissue Plus data with EPIC Clarity (the electronic medical record), Oncolog (the university tumor registry database), CoPath (the anatomical pathology database), CancerGeneConnect (the familial genetics database) and other disease-specific databases. Due to this robust infrastructure, biospecimens are automatically annotated with demographic, pathological, and clinical data so that interested investigators can perform basic sample availability queries of this database in a de-identified manner through a secure web interface.
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